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In the noisy world of media, journalists often resort to shouting in order to be heard. Sometimes that expresses itself in hasty and hyper-critical judgments. A recent example: the reaction to yesterday's announcement of Amazon's new Fire Phone. Check out reviews from the leading digeratti, and they're running about 2-to-1 against the new device.

Above all, the device lays down a significant marker: Amazon is elbowing its way into yet another market. Chances are, that market will never be the same. The phone is a down payment -- maybe a long overdue one, maybe not -- on a different way to connect customers to an increasing multitude of things they can try and buy. It's another machine to aid Bezos' unrelenting push to reinvent the retail experience.

You can bet the Fire Phone won't stop at some of the more impressive features -- Firefly (which i.d.s and lets you buy 100 million-plus items); the 3-D-ish dynamic perspective; the Mayday video support team; whispersynch to toggle back and forth between voice and text to "read" books. Not anymore than it will stop at one carrier like AT&T or fail to add hundreds of thousands of apps or come in with tiered pricing. Or figure out more entertaining ways to sell stuff.

The Kindle Fire didn't upend the iPad. The Fire Phone won't send , Samsung or back to the drafting tables.

But it most likely will -- or should -- cause everyone in the increasingly overlapping worlds of media, entertainment and retail to rethink their strategies, their devices and their software. Because Amazon has just created another entry point for consumer engagement.

Keep an eye on sales of the Fire Phone (if Amazon, prodigiously secretive about a lot of telling information, breaks out these results). Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the smartest bloggers in tech pan the device. If consumers like the ease of use and the increasingly frictionless experience of shopping, that's really all that matters.